There is nothing that excites us more than exploring the creative niches this world has to offer. In the case of Heather Hardison, she’s managed to carve herself two creative niches: sign painting on the one hand and food illustration on the other.
Having graduated from the College of Design at North Carolina State University with a degree in Art & Design, she’s now based in Oakland, CA, where she’s working full time as both sign painter and illustrator. She’s also the author and illustrator of the book Homegrown: Illustrated Bites from your Garden to your Table – a fully illustrated guide to growing and cooking seasonal produce.
“My work is a hybrid of digital and analog,” she relayed in an interview with The Design Kids. “Almost everything that I do starts as a pencil sketch. From there, the final output depends on the purpose. For hand-painted signs, the entire process is analog. For designs that utilize hand-painted letters, but have final output that is print or digital, I scan in the lettering to manipulate in Photoshop. Other times, when something needs to be scaleable, my sketch is vectorized in Illustrator.”
“These days I keep busy with my illustration and sign painting jobs,” she went on to say. “But I’m always looking for ways to bring those skills together. So far, murals and food packaging have been two of my favorite ways to accomplish that.”
A creative through and through, she’s also a fan of gardening, beekeeping, cooking, and rock climbing. Below you’ll find some highlights from her Instagram page:
